I was extremely dissapointed to see this
article. For one thing it insults your Iranian readers and it insults
feminists. And it insults your readers' credulity.

I
cannot believe that I have to go through a list of the inaccuracies and
falsities in the article because as you know they appear in almost every
single paragraph. You are aware are you not that the so-called National
Council of Resistance of Iran is just another name for the Mojahedin-e
Khalq. You know don't you that the whole 'Iranian Resistance' under
whatever name they like to use, is led by one man, Massoud Rajavi, and not
by a herd of women as implied in the article. Massoud Rajavi fronts his
wife Maryam and these women becuase they are totally obedient to him - not
because they have feminist credentials. It is very convenient for him that
this also gives the illusion that women run the organisation. But this is
simply not true.

Christine Aziz has become a friend of the Mojahedin. But she has never
been a member, she has not seen, or she chooses not to see, the reality
behind the fiction which the organisation spins.

I am
surprised that The Independent chose not to check the veracity of this
article with its own Iran experts. Do you not have someone on the Foreign
Desk who could have advised on its accuracy. Or, perhaps, as Ms Aziz also
implies in her article 'it is all about politics' and you have chosen to
print this fictionalised version of the Mojahedin organisation as a
goodwill gesture? Are you sure you know to whom this goodwill is aimed?
Certainly it is not the MKO since Massoud Rajavi is beholden to some other
supporter now that he has lost Saddam Hussein.

You
know of course that the Mojahedin (or, if you like, the 'tank girls of the
NLA) were mercenaries of Saddam Hussein. It is a little disingenuous of Ms
Aziz to quote one of these tank girls as saying, "we
were only in Iraq to overthrow the Islamic fundamentalist regime across
the border in Iran" when clear and openly available evidence exists which
reveals that Massoud Rajavi sent these very tank girls to attack and
suppress Kurdish villagers in March 1991 when they tried to organise an
uprising against the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. If you doubt this, we
can send evidence. Or, introduce you to a former Mojahedin and NLA member
now living in the UK who refused to obey orders to use his tank to crush
Kurdish villagers - that is to run over women and children and men with
his tank if they got in his way. For this refusal he suffered years of
punishment and persecution at the hands of the Mojahedin. However, he is
fortunate he was not sent to Abu Ghraib prison as so many other dissenting
members of the Mojahedin were. Perhaps Ms Aziz would like to hear from
them about the reality behind the fiction spun by the Mojahedin.

Do you seriously expect
your readers to believe that the reason the Mojahedin was listed as a
terrorist entity by the USA, UK and EU was based on a political whim - "as
a goodwill gesture towards Iran's newly elected President Mohammed
Khatami" and not on hard facts about the organisation? Do you believe
that?

The obvious response to
most of the issues covered by the article in which the Mojahedin gets
to speak is that "well they would say that wouldn't they". But where is Ms
Aziz's challenge to these opinions? Where is the fair and balanced
reporting. Ms Aziz talks about US General Ray Odierno of the 4th Infantry
division visiting the camp to negotiate disarmament. He was also given VIP
treatment (I say also because Ms Aziz would have been given the same
treatment herself during her own visit). Do neither of them reflect, in a
country suffering over ten years of severe sanctions, that the money and
the logistics behind such luxury must have come from somewhere - did it
not remind them a little of Saddam Hussein's own palaces?

I am more than happy to
speak to you about the Mojahedin, the NCRI, the NLA and the Iranian
Resistance and to give the hard facts behind Ms Aziz's fictionalised
version.

Please do not reduce the
credibility of your excellent newspaper to this level.